“‘You met crass fools in that Kassirian shop yesterday,’ Locke said, ‘but you hired professionals. Whatever happened there has passed. When you talked to Jaxson, I assume you talked to him about hiring capable hands for your cause. Well, you’ve got something better than that. You’ve hired Battaracks.'”

Making the decision to finish Serpent in a Cage (again) and publish it (once and for all) has been one of the most liberating decisions I have made for my writing. Granted, I understand that I may still be in the honeymoon stage of this idea. It’s still so new and fresh and exciting, but I wrote almost 10 pages of it on Friday, and I have spent the last few days at work wistfully waiting to get home to pick at it a little bit more. It’s wonderful, and the writing feels fairly solid, too (although editing will show how right I am in that). I chatted a little with a friend about cover design and helping me craft the Aryneth logo for the series, and I’m just feeling an outpouring of love and inspiration for the book. It’s really quite phenomenal, and I’m incredibly focused. Once I have a project on the right foot, my multitasking OCD slips away and I’m actually fairly driven on one thing. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it’s amazing.

Clearly, I’m excited. And I want to get others excited, too, and I know there’s a little thread of that out there for people who have been following the blog and know just how bloody important SiaC is to me. And a lot of my readers are authors themselves, so they understand how the excitement for a project just gets under your skin and bubbles in your blood down to your fingers, which can’t seem to stay still for the excitement of the story. So I was thinking: what can I do on the blog to get people interested in SiaC? I was thinking it could be fun to do some features on the characters, and open it up to dialogue and “interview questions” from the readers, but, on the same token, a line I read in another blog on how “no one knows these characters and so no one really cares, don’t bore them with your babbling by writing as or tweeting as your characters” keeps sticking out in my brain. Would anyone be interested in some SiaC-theme ‘character’ posts? The idea is still vague, and kind of pointless without participation, so I figured I’d just see what you guys thought.

So, I’m sticking with my goal of at least a page of Serpent in a Cage a day as my ultimate RoW80 goal right now. Eyes on the prize!

I’ll also, of course, be keeping up with my reading, and I actually have two books waiting in the wings to be reviewed, as well as two more books that are just about finished, so things are looking good for that goal, even if I’m still really far behind for the year. I just need to kick it up a little, and it’s never that difficult for me to find time to do more reading!

I’m also picking a little bit at my Western With Dragons piece (since a lot of people have expressed an interest in that one), and a short story for the next The First Line. And how are your goals going for you so far?

Be sure to check out my fellow RoWers here if you get the chance, and, above all, happy writing!